Ramblings of an Emergency Physician in Texas

Hilarious Tamiflu side-effect

Okay, it’s not hilarious, it’s funny that it’s included as a side effect of Tamiflu (treatment for influenza):

I’m not a huge fan of Tamiflu (for the neuropsychiatric side effects), but I saw this last night on my pocket brain, and had to look today to see if it’s really listed.

It is, that’s off the Tamiflu full-download of the medication information (Link on the official Tamiflu page).

So you know, when patients are in studies, basically everything that happens while the subject is taking the medication has to be reported to the FDA, which is how all that oddness gets enshrined as less than 1% side effects. I do find it a little amusing that ‘pyrexia’ (fever) is listed as a side effect, since influenza classically has a fever, and the peritonsillar abscess diagnosis quite possibly indicates the patient didn’t have the flu, they had an undiagnosed condition subsequently diagnosed.